New York’s most influential backer of hydrofracking for natural gas is predicting that Gov. Cuomo will give the go-ahead for the widely used drilling technique by late December, while others say mid-January at the earliest.

Deputy Senate Majority Leader Thomas Libous, a Republican who represents the economically depressed Binghamton area, where much of the Marcellus gas deposits are located, also warned that Cuomo risks fierce, politically motivated, opposition to the drilling if he waits to take action until after the Legislature returns to Albany at the start of the year.

“If the governor goes past the end of the year into the legislative session then it becomes a real problem . . . You get emotion taking over when the session takes place,’’ said Libous, who recently revealed he was the target of death threats from anti-hydrofracking activists.

Libous, who has been in regular contact with Cuomo, predicted that an ongoing, multiyear, state study of hydrofracking would be completed before Jan. 1 and that the governor would then quickly give the go-ahead.

“I’m extremely hopeful that something is going to take place before the end of the year,’’ said Libous.

However, sources close to the Cuomo administration said they expected that a new study on the potential health impact of hydrofracking ordered by the governor last month would delay a final decision until mid-January and possibly longer.

“This can’t be rushed, it has to be thorough,’’ said a source, noting that Cuomo had ordered the health study in an effort to undercut lawsuits being threatened by anti-drilling environmental organizations.

Health studies already conducted in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Texas, where hydrofracking is widely conducted, have found no evidence of significant harmful effects, the sources said.

“This has been studied for years in other states with only isolated cases of problems identified, and they were quickly fixed,’’ said one source.

Cuomo has repeatedly said he wants “the science, not the politics,’’ to guide his decision on whether to authorize hydrofracking.

But the nation’s and the state’s top environmental officials — US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, an appointee of President Obama’s, and Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joseph Martens — have already said that the drilling can be safely conducted.

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Former Democratic national chairman and onetime presidential hopeful Howard Dean had some harsh words for Attorney General Eric Schneiderman last week in the wake of Schneiderman’s highly publicized lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase and Co.

Dean called the lawsuit “political’’ and, in his sharpest cut of all, compared Schneiderman to former Attorney General and disgraced-ex Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who became notorious for his own high-profile lawsuits that forced corporations to pay high fines or risk financial collapse.

Dean seemed embarrassed as he sided with JPMorgan during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” noting the bank belongs to “an industry I rarely have anything good to say about.’’

But Dean, the former governor of Vermont, said that JPMorgan had helped the federal government in 2008 by taking over the liabilities of the now-defunct banking house, Bear Stearns, which engaged in what Schneiderman charges was the fraudulent sale of mortgage-backed securities.

“It doesn’t strike me that this is entirely fair,’’ Dean said of Schneiderman’s case.

“Because if Bear Sterns would have gone bankrupt, then there would be no recourse. So I think this is a little bit of a political . . . This is out of the book of Eliot Spitzer.’’

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Cuomo has decided to create a new “sports division’’ within the Empire State Development Corp. to aggressively seek the expansion of professional and amateur sporting events around the state.

He may announce the effort, designed to boost tourism and encourage the sports-related expansion of jobs, in his State of the State Address in January, if not sooner, an administration source said.

The governor’s own pet project for the new unit is already being researched: “The Iditarod of Kayaking,’’ in the form of a 300-mile race by paddlers from the start of the Hudson River at Lake Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondacks to Lower New York Bay.